"We support deregulation 100 percent..." (N-M spokesman, 1997; notes N-M wanted to sell generators and "concentrate on the transmission and distribution of energy" -- did it?); N-M made some bad investments and is scheduled to request a rate hike (did it?); and N-M's own website says: "Deregulation [has] changed the laws and regulations governing the electricity industry to promote competition..." (how so?).
Yes, and the Red pill should taste like protein-amino acid goo, and the Blue pill should taste like that steak that Cipher bites into as he's talking to Agent Smith.
Which raises the question, what if instead of choosing, Neo had just taken 3 of each flavor and eaten them at once? With the jelly bellies, you could find out.:)
I think this idea could work, but only if the back end was a Google search, or something equally arbitrary and unbiased. After all, no one wants to trust the person trying to sell you something to give you unbiased information. Why would you trust them just because "ooh, it's on my cell phone!"?
Anyway, as is quite often the case these days, the difference between something truly cool and something we all mock and disparage comes down to the words "tied in", "proprietary", and "content control". How long until the corporations making these decisions realize that, with just a little less greed, they can reap fantastic financial rewards. (Greed meaning $$, but also tight control and lock out.)
Congratulations to the EFF and the majority of Slashdot viewers for sticking to your principles. It seems too often lately that I hear people argue a particular point with some moral justification, only to later hear them abandon the moral justification when it supports some other point that the arguer is against.
To spell it out: the moral is that "You've bought it, you can do what you want with it." (Within reason, of course.)
I personally may not edit movies, but I fully support the rights of others to do so, once they've bought it. Besides, we all know how some movies get a sex scene "tacked on" just to titillate the dating audience. In these cases, the people editing movies are probably improving the movie by doing so.
Anyway, I am even more appreciative of the EFF (although not really surprised, they're good guys) and more impressed with Slashdotters in general (what is the world coming to?:).
I could not agree more with everything you say. What is especially ironic about these politicians' actions is that there is doctrine that pretty much directly contradicts their line of thinking.
I don't know how much you know about the LDS teachings, so to summarize: we believe that before coming to Earth, Lucifer had a plan such that every soul that came to Earth would be saved. They would be compelled to act righteously, so they would never commit any sin. Jesus had a plan in which man was to be given free agency. Man would have to choose to be righteous, but would be better for it. Needless to say, Jesus' plan was chosen, and Lucifer rebelled and became Satan. It seems to me that some of our politicians' ideas (public places can't be open on Sunday, crazy liquor laws, the porn czar, etc.) bear more resemblance to Satan's plan!
I wouldn't be surprised to find that other "Fundi Christian" politicians, as you call them, are equally guilty of hypocrisy vis a vis their beliefs. Not to mention that this kind of increase in government control of our lives contradicts the basic principle of conservatism.
Anyway, I bet you'd have a different view of Mormons if you viewed these LDS politicians not as representative of the LDS membership in general but as the bottom of the barrel. I certainly do! Consider also that it is likely that many of them are LDS members not because of an inherent belief, but to take advantage of the social advantages of being viewed as a peer (especially when election time comes around).
>Very steep hill to climb. The church and state >are so tightly welded together in Utah that it >is virtually impossible to get any Democrat >into a national office seat from there because >the LDS and Republicans are one and the same in >Utah.
Jim Matheson has managed to do it for two terms now in the U.S. House. Look, I am a Mormon semi-Republican, and I have voted for Democrats at both the state and federal level before. I tend to dislike the Democratic party platform, but if the Republican is worse (which is sometimes the case) I will switch over in our lesser-of-two-evils voting system.
Anyway, the point is, I have never felt as though it was a sin to vote for a Democrat. It is certainly not doctrine. I have heard members of the church that say you are supposed to vote Republican, but they usually get reprimanded for saying it. In fact, the presidency of the church issues a statement that is read in church meetings every election year that explicitly states that members should vote their conscience and that the church does not back any political party. Of course, Jim Hansen might have said what you say. I have never heard it, but I could certainly believe it. However, he does not represent the church, he is just a member. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone from the church leadership had a few words with him after saying something like that. I know that there are members of the church that share your opinion (minus the anti-Mormon sentiment) exactly. Yet they continue to be unharassed and members of the church in good standing.
Look, I agree with you that the Republican domination in the state and local offices needs to be broken. I'd rather see more independants than Democrats, since Utah Democrats annoy me as much as Utah Republicans. But don't confuse the fact that a Republican majority and a Mormon majority exists in Utah to mean that the LDS church controls politics in Utah. Any Republican (or Democrat) who tells you this is lying. Consider that they are politicians, and that it is most likely in their interests for you to believe them. Virtually any LDS church member that I know would actually be put off if a candidate were to pull the religion card.
Due to the "birthday paradox", to which all hash algorithms seem to be susceptible, the strength of the MD5 (128-bit) algorithm is 2^64. In other words, the chances that a two MD5 inputs hash to the same value is 1 in 2^64. (The chance that a certain MD5 input matches a chosen MD5 value remains 1 in 2^128, however.)
Anyway, while MD5 is no longer very safe for cryptography, it will suit very well in this situation. Just from some quick rough calculations, it appears that there are on the order of 2^24 5-line code blocks in BSD and Linux combined. The chances are (very roughly) 1 in 2^40 (extremely remote) that any of those MD5 values match each other with differing inputs.
I won't bother to respond to your obvious anti-Mormon prejudice, since anyone who reads it will certainly recognize it as such. However, if you live in Utah, you might have forgotten that Scott Howell, the Democrat who ran against Hatch in the 2000 election, is also a member of the LDS church. Hatch beat him 60-something to 30-something, which is really not that unusual for a 5-term senator vs. a State House member running for the first time (IIRC) for a US Senate position. Obviously religion was not a big issue in either the campaign or the voters' minds.
It is true that Utah is predominately Republican, and there are plenty of bad things that go along with letting any party have so much power in the State Senate and House, but your extreme anti-Mormon views on Hatch are both incorrect and offensive.
Why is it that whenever the LDS religion comes up on slashdot, so many commenters spout this kind of vitriol? Sen. Hatch is not acting in the interest of the Utah (or American) public, so he needs to go. Why does the fact that he's Mormon make any difference to you? If he was a Jew, in a predominately Jewish state, would you say the same things? There are organizations that cultivate that kind of thinking. Maybe you should go sign up. Otherwise, try to exercise a little more tolerance towards others that may think differently than you.
Oh, I will remember, you can be assured. I voted for him last time because the other guy was a bonehead, and Hatch had recently been all tech-friendly around the time of the Napster case. I still remembered the DMCA, but I thought he had repented. I hate getting burned. Two strikes is enough.
I've told everyone I know who could possibly care, and I'll do so again when his ads start showing up on TV. Of course, that's not until 2007.:(
Just to refresh your memories... Senator Hatch (from my own state, Utah) sponsored the DMCA. That act alone should have ended the guy's career, normally. But the general populace never seems to care about "Internet issues".
He later seemed to flip positions, doing a number of things to help Napster out, and many slashdotters were singing his praises. I was more doubtful, but I bit my tongue, thinking that maybe he had changed. Obviously he has not; either that, or that second big contribution finally came through from the RIAA, so it's time to go to bat for them again.
Here's a great synopsis of what people seemed to generally think of him back in the Napster days: link
I think it's time for us (esp. in Utah) to make sure he doesn't get another term. Even viewed in the most favorable light, the guy is definitely a loose cannon. The big problem is, no one of any quality ever seems to run against him, and in this heavily Republican state, it's unlikely that a mediocre Democrat with no real platform can win.
Remember this moment at the next election, Utahns!
First of all, I don't have any problem with the PageRank system. But you have to admit, google has entered our vernacular ("googling") and affected the way we perceive the internet. Google is, and stands to remain, the dominant web search engine. People are beginning to equate google with web search. Imagine how you would use the internet if you had absolutely no search capability? (Of course, there are other search engines, but what I'm saying is that people are starting to think that google=web searching. When they do that, they subconsciously assign that level of value to google.)
This is the latest sign. The story is not whether google is "fair" or not about some stupid attempt at creating a meme. The story is that: 1) People are starting to think about whether something that google does is "fair" or not. That's the kind of language usually used to describe government entitlements, social conventions, democratic processes, etc. Remember, Google is a company. It used to be a little company; it's probably not very large still. Think of the kind of power that they have! 2) Google was able to spread this new meme extremely far in 42 days. That may sound like a long time to people used to thinking about how quickly an email virus can propagate, but it seems really very fast for a meme to propagate. An email virus can infect the next host by an automated electronic process. For a meme to be effective on google, the meme must be part of something that one user reads, thinks about, and posts an essay or some comments about, then a latency is incurred until the next person(s) reads these comments. Brains are much slower meme-processors than computers are virus-processors. But google is proving to be a very fast "network" connecting us as nodes.
It's no wonder that Microsoft wants to compete with google. They are beginning to see how much power google holds and they envy it. I hope google wins that battle, because I trust their excellent track record of good decisions over Microsoft's.
Still I can't help wondering if the growing power that they enjoy over the "internet experience" is a healthy thing. It's kind of like living in a country that has a benevolent king. Things are great, but it makes you wonder what the king's son is going to be like.
Everyone else here has suggested avsforum.com, which is the best place to find the info you want and more. I'd also suggest you look at www.hometheaterforum.com. It's a nice site with tons of info too.
I have a Sony similar to your projector but older (1272) and would suggest you do what they call an "anamorphic squeeze" (search on avsforum) and use 1280x720 as your native resolution. That should be very resolvable by your 8" guns. I guess having 1920x1080 interlaced might look better for source material at that res, but your projector will not resolve it, so you'll have overscan. (That's where each line is drawn slightly overlapping the previous line, so they all blend together. It is caused by your electronics being able to handle higher resolutions than your optics.) You really need 9" guns to resolve 1080i.
I currently haven't taken the HDTV plunge, since TV really isn't that important to me. You might consider how important TV programming is to you, regardless of the specs. After all, if all you can get is the latest Friends and Jay Leno in HD, what's the point? I mainly watch DVDs (using WinDVD or PowerDVD) scaled up to 720p. That's the source material I care about more.
BTW, if you don't mind running Windows, which will almost be a necessity, it is a lot of fun to play games on. I got a Radeon (nVidia cards are ok too) and used Powerstrip to insert a custom timing for 1280x720. After that, I installed the latest DirectX and now many games (mostly the 3D ones) will recognize and allow the 1280x720 res. It's a lot of fun to play Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed or games like that on a 100+" diagonal screen.:) The widescreen aspect ratio almost makes it better, especially for racing/flying types of games.
Anyway, enjoy the new hobby. You'll never be able to give it up once you start.:)
Wow, I guess that means that this is the 2-year anniversary of that story being first submitted to/. I'm glad to see it finally made it on to the front page. Congrats, EricR.:)
I predict that 99% of predictions will be made by other organizations than Gartner by 2013. (0.7 probability.) Gartner's worth will have been reduced to 0.01% (by volume in $1000's of USD) because no one will be interested in their stupid attempts at reading the tea (maybe pot) leaves.
AES, DES, Serpent are all symmetric, as were all of the entries to the NIST AES contest. I forget if it was a condition of the contest.
Since these are all symmetric, key distribution must either happen over another channel, or through a public key exchange method, all of which (AFAIK) use asymmetric algorithms. I don't know that I'd say that asymmetric algorithms are more susceptible, though. The biggest disadvantage to those algorithms is that they tend to require a lot more computing power, and one of the goals of the NIST AES contest was to provide an algorithm that would be implementable on really small platforms, such as embedded devices and smart cards. In fact, one of the best traits of Rijndael is that it seemed just as secure as the other entries while remaining very simple. It has been implemented on a few small 8-bit microcontrollers, and, when optimized, can take as little as 32 bytes of state (RAM).
It'll start a new kind of patent, the "email method" patent. And the the patent examiner won't be able to find any prior art, even though he tried really really hard.
The real reason the MPAA are so excited about this format is that it will give them the ability to STOP circulation of some DVDs. This kind of read-once system means that the media corps can control public appetite for a movie. Disney wised up to this marketing technique years ago by intentionally shutting down the sale of several older titles to conveniently reissue them several years later. When they do so, people go out and buy them in droves, thinking "Ahh, I liked Snow White as a kid, and my kids haven't seen it yet! I'm so lucky they re-released it so I can buy it for the cost of a new release!".
If this system takes off, you can expect to lose the ability to rent a lot of older titles... at least temporarily. Then, periodically, titles that are cheap enough and popular enough will get reissued, and others that would cost too much for the benefit (i.e. movies where the amount of the sale that goes directly to the studio is lower) will never be seen again.
Also, if a new copy protection or region coding "enhancement" scheme becomes available that would be backward compatible with the majority of the DVD players out there, the studios can start issuing _all_ read-once DVDs with the new scheme. That way they can force the new technology on consumers much more quickly. And if the new scheme is cracked, they can incorporate a fix just as fast as they are able to change the master being used by manufacturing. Of course, those few who have older players that won't work with the new scheme will need to "upgrade", resulting in a new royalty to the studios.
If this sounds too nefarious to be possible, go find out more about the copy protection that these same studios are trying to incorporate into CDs, or find out about the "region coding enhancement" that is on some newer DVDs. Now imagine a world where these read-once DVDs are firmly entrenched in the market, and try to imagine the studios NOT using their advantage in the supply chain to force a newer, better protection scheme on consumers. Yeah, I thought so.
The studios have noticed that drug dealers don't sell kits to help you make your own drugs whenever you want. They sell drugs directly, and customers keep coming back. Which way do you think the dealers would make more money?
Perl code is already compressed. It is very near to random data. The problem is that it is compressed with an algorithm called "perl hacking" that is not reversible. That's why Perl is sometimes called a write-only language.
;)
My general rule of thumb of language readability: the more often you find yourself holding the shift key and pressing a number key from the top row, the less readable the language is.
e.g.
int result = obj.foo(bar)// readable
p* += &(*--q);// less readable
#i %*)@!%(#@)**#// not readable... check to see if the perl compiler will accept it as valid code... if not, you may actually have random data!:)
I couldn't help laughing at the title. The first thing that popped into my head was, "How do you measure the amount of steganography on the internet?" Seems like the answer is that there should be a lot of nearly useless information, a low signal-to-noise ratio if you will. Which, I'm sorry to say, is a very accurate description of the internet.:P
The problem is that this won't hamper the police too much. They'll still scan houses with FLIR, violating the privacy of the citizens they're sworn to serve. They just can't go get a warrant with the results of the scanning, or use it in court. How many of you have confidence that when they take the scanner out to scan someone *with* a warrant, that they won't get "curious" and check some other places they are suspicious of for any reason? Then, if they can find anything that might indicate an illegal activity, how long do you think it takes for them to wait and watch until they've got enough evidence for a warrant? I think police use illegal means of gathering evidence all of the time, they just need to "clean up" the evidence by "finding" it in a legal way afterward. Which is much easier once you know what the evidence is.
The real problem is not FLIR or any future technology, it's the corruption in our police force. New technology just enables them to become more corrupt if they choose to be. And in the end, as the corruption becomes more widespread and more routine, it is the honest citizens that get the shaft, since they effectively lose their 4th amendment rights.
Ultima Online, Everquest, etc. have tried the pay-per-play model. Admittedly, I haven't tried them, because I find the pricing model extremely distasteful, but from what I've heard from friends and online, the idiot-to-real-player ratio is no better than any other "free after initial purchase" online game. Which would seem to indicate either 1) there are as many stupid people who would pay to play as there are those who would not, or 2) charging a fee to play discourages (proportionally) as many real players as it does the idiots.
Actually, the second possibility is just a restatement of the first. Anyway, as a prospective "real player", I think both items are true. So let's encourage the gaming industry to charge us in the way we would prefer to be charged. Isn't that what capitalism is supposed to do for us anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
"We support deregulation 100 percent..." (N-M spokesman, 1997; notes N-M wanted to sell generators and "concentrate on the transmission and distribution of energy" -- did it?);
N-M made some bad investments and is scheduled to request a rate hike (did it?);
and N-M's own website says: "Deregulation [has] changed the laws and regulations governing the electricity industry to promote competition..." (how so?).
Also, show your work.
Pencils down!
Yes, and the Red pill should taste like protein-amino acid goo, and the Blue pill should taste like that steak that Cipher bites into as he's talking to Agent Smith.
Which raises the question, what if instead of choosing, Neo had just taken 3 of each flavor and eaten them at once? With the jelly bellies, you could find out.
I think this idea could work, but only if the back end was a Google search, or something equally arbitrary and unbiased. After all, no one wants to trust the person trying to sell you something to give you unbiased information. Why would you trust them just because "ooh, it's on my cell phone!"?
Anyway, as is quite often the case these days, the difference between something truly cool and something we all mock and disparage comes down to the words "tied in", "proprietary", and "content control". How long until the corporations making these decisions realize that, with just a little less greed, they can reap fantastic financial rewards. (Greed meaning $$, but also tight control and lock out.)
You know, this is a cool idea, but the true killer app is when they bring this technology to 802.11.
Oh wait...
Congratulations to the EFF and the majority of Slashdot viewers for sticking to your principles. It seems too often lately that I hear people argue a particular point with some moral justification, only to later hear them abandon the moral justification when it supports some other point that the arguer is against.
:).
To spell it out: the moral is that "You've bought it, you can do what you want with it." (Within reason, of course.)
I personally may not edit movies, but I fully support the rights of others to do so, once they've bought it. Besides, we all know how some movies get a sex scene "tacked on" just to titillate the dating audience. In these cases, the people editing movies are probably improving the movie by doing so.
Anyway, I am even more appreciative of the EFF (although not really surprised, they're good guys) and more impressed with Slashdotters in general (what is the world coming to?
Right on!
I could not agree more with everything you say. What is especially ironic about these politicians' actions is that there is doctrine that pretty much directly contradicts their line of thinking.
I don't know how much you know about the LDS teachings, so to summarize: we believe that before coming to Earth, Lucifer had a plan such that every soul that came to Earth would be saved. They would be compelled to act righteously, so they would never commit any sin. Jesus had a plan in which man was to be given free agency. Man would have to choose to be righteous, but would be better for it. Needless to say, Jesus' plan was chosen, and Lucifer rebelled and became Satan. It seems to me that some of our politicians' ideas (public places can't be open on Sunday, crazy liquor laws, the porn czar, etc.) bear more resemblance to Satan's plan!
I wouldn't be surprised to find that other "Fundi Christian" politicians, as you call them, are equally guilty of hypocrisy vis a vis their beliefs. Not to mention that this kind of increase in government control of our lives contradicts the basic principle of conservatism.
Anyway, I bet you'd have a different view of Mormons if you viewed these LDS politicians not as representative of the LDS membership in general but as the bottom of the barrel. I certainly do! Consider also that it is likely that many of them are LDS members not because of an inherent belief, but to take advantage of the social advantages of being viewed as a peer (especially when election time comes around).
>Very steep hill to climb. The church and state
>are so tightly welded together in Utah that it
>is virtually impossible to get any Democrat
>into a national office seat from there because
>the LDS and Republicans are one and the same in
>Utah.
Jim Matheson has managed to do it for two terms now in the U.S. House. Look, I am a Mormon semi-Republican, and I have voted for Democrats at both the state and federal level before. I tend to dislike the Democratic party platform, but if the Republican is worse (which is sometimes the case) I will switch over in our lesser-of-two-evils voting system.
Anyway, the point is, I have never felt as though it was a sin to vote for a Democrat. It is certainly not doctrine. I have heard members of the church that say you are supposed to vote Republican, but they usually get reprimanded for saying it. In fact, the presidency of the church issues a statement that is read in church meetings every election year that explicitly states that members should vote their conscience and that the church does not back any political party. Of course, Jim Hansen might have said what you say. I have never heard it, but I could certainly believe it. However, he does not represent the church, he is just a member. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone from the church leadership had a few words with him after saying something like that. I know that there are members of the church that share your opinion (minus the anti-Mormon sentiment) exactly. Yet they continue to be unharassed and members of the church in good standing.
Look, I agree with you that the Republican domination in the state and local offices needs to be broken. I'd rather see more independants than Democrats, since Utah Democrats annoy me as much as Utah Republicans. But don't confuse the fact that a Republican majority and a Mormon majority exists in Utah to mean that the LDS church controls politics in Utah. Any Republican (or Democrat) who tells you this is lying. Consider that they are politicians, and that it is most likely in their interests for you to believe them. Virtually any LDS church member that I know would actually be put off if a candidate were to pull the religion card.
Due to the "birthday paradox", to which all hash algorithms seem to be susceptible, the strength of the MD5 (128-bit) algorithm is 2^64. In other words, the chances that a two MD5 inputs hash to the same value is 1 in 2^64. (The chance that a certain MD5 input matches a chosen MD5 value remains 1 in 2^128, however.)
Anyway, while MD5 is no longer very safe for cryptography, it will suit very well in this situation. Just from some quick rough calculations, it appears that there are on the order of 2^24 5-line code blocks in BSD and Linux combined. The chances are (very roughly) 1 in 2^40 (extremely remote) that any of those MD5 values match each other with differing inputs.
I won't bother to respond to your obvious anti-Mormon prejudice, since anyone who reads it will certainly recognize it as such. However, if you live in Utah, you might have forgotten that Scott Howell, the Democrat who ran against Hatch in the 2000 election, is also a member of the LDS church. Hatch beat him 60-something to 30-something, which is really not that unusual for a 5-term senator vs. a State House member running for the first time (IIRC) for a US Senate position. Obviously religion was not a big issue in either the campaign or the voters' minds.
It is true that Utah is predominately Republican, and there are plenty of bad things that go along with letting any party have so much power in the State Senate and House, but your extreme anti-Mormon views on Hatch are both incorrect and offensive.
Why is it that whenever the LDS religion comes up on slashdot, so many commenters spout this kind of vitriol? Sen. Hatch is not acting in the interest of the Utah (or American) public, so he needs to go. Why does the fact that he's Mormon make any difference to you? If he was a Jew, in a predominately Jewish state, would you say the same things? There are organizations that cultivate that kind of thinking. Maybe you should go sign up. Otherwise, try to exercise a little more tolerance towards others that may think differently than you.
Oh, I will remember, you can be assured. I voted for him last time because the other guy was a bonehead, and Hatch had recently been all tech-friendly around the time of the Napster case. I still remembered the DMCA, but I thought he had repented. I hate getting burned. Two strikes is enough.
:(
I've told everyone I know who could possibly care, and I'll do so again when his ads start showing up on TV. Of course, that's not until 2007.
Just to refresh your memories... Senator Hatch (from my own state, Utah) sponsored the DMCA. That act alone should have ended the guy's career, normally. But the general populace never seems to care about "Internet issues".
He later seemed to flip positions, doing a number of things to help Napster out, and many slashdotters were singing his praises. I was more doubtful, but I bit my tongue, thinking that maybe he had changed. Obviously he has not; either that, or that second big contribution finally came through from the RIAA, so it's time to go to bat for them again.
Here's a great synopsis of what people seemed to generally think of him back in the Napster days: link
I think it's time for us (esp. in Utah) to make sure he doesn't get another term. Even viewed in the most favorable light, the guy is definitely a loose cannon. The big problem is, no one of any quality ever seems to run against him, and in this heavily Republican state, it's unlikely that a mediocre Democrat with no real platform can win.
Remember this moment at the next election, Utahns!
-- Dave
How about in Soviet Russia? Anyone know the answer?
Google is the real "second superpower".
First of all, I don't have any problem with the PageRank system. But you have to admit, google has entered our vernacular ("googling") and affected the way we perceive the internet. Google is, and stands to remain, the dominant web search engine. People are beginning to equate google with web search. Imagine how you would use the internet if you had absolutely no search capability? (Of course, there are other search engines, but what I'm saying is that people are starting to think that google=web searching. When they do that, they subconsciously assign that level of value to google.)
This is the latest sign. The story is not whether google is "fair" or not about some stupid attempt at creating a meme. The story is that:
1) People are starting to think about whether something that google does is "fair" or not. That's the kind of language usually used to describe government entitlements, social conventions, democratic processes, etc. Remember, Google is a company. It used to be a little company; it's probably not very large still. Think of the kind of power that they have!
2) Google was able to spread this new meme extremely far in 42 days. That may sound like a long time to people used to thinking about how quickly an email virus can propagate, but it seems really very fast for a meme to propagate. An email virus can infect the next host by an automated electronic process. For a meme to be effective on google, the meme must be part of something that one user reads, thinks about, and posts an essay or some comments about, then a latency is incurred until the next person(s) reads these comments. Brains are much slower meme-processors than computers are virus-processors. But google is proving to be a very fast "network" connecting us as nodes.
It's no wonder that Microsoft wants to compete with google. They are beginning to see how much power google holds and they envy it. I hope google wins that battle, because I trust their excellent track record of good decisions over Microsoft's.
Still I can't help wondering if the growing power that they enjoy over the "internet experience" is a healthy thing. It's kind of like living in a country that has a benevolent king. Things are great, but it makes you wonder what the king's son is going to be like.
Dave
Everyone else here has suggested avsforum.com, which is the best place to find the info you want and more. I'd also suggest you look at www.hometheaterforum.com. It's a nice site with tons of info too.
:) The widescreen aspect ratio almost makes it better, especially for racing/flying types of games.
:)
I have a Sony similar to your projector but older (1272) and would suggest you do what they call an "anamorphic squeeze" (search on avsforum) and use 1280x720 as your native resolution. That should be very resolvable by your 8" guns. I guess having 1920x1080 interlaced might look better for source material at that res, but your projector will not resolve it, so you'll have overscan. (That's where each line is drawn slightly overlapping the previous line, so they all blend together. It is caused by your electronics being able to handle higher resolutions than your optics.) You really need 9" guns to resolve 1080i.
I currently haven't taken the HDTV plunge, since TV really isn't that important to me. You might consider how important TV programming is to you, regardless of the specs. After all, if all you can get is the latest Friends and Jay Leno in HD, what's the point? I mainly watch DVDs (using WinDVD or PowerDVD) scaled up to 720p. That's the source material I care about more.
BTW, if you don't mind running Windows, which will almost be a necessity, it is a lot of fun to play games on. I got a Radeon (nVidia cards are ok too) and used Powerstrip to insert a custom timing for 1280x720. After that, I installed the latest DirectX and now many games (mostly the 3D ones) will recognize and allow the 1280x720 res. It's a lot of fun to play Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed or games like that on a 100+" diagonal screen.
Anyway, enjoy the new hobby. You'll never be able to give it up once you start.
Wow, I guess that means that this is the 2-year anniversary of that story being first submitted to /. I'm glad to see it finally made it on to the front page. Congrats, EricR. :)
I predict that 99% of predictions will be made by other organizations than Gartner by 2013. (0.7 probability.) Gartner's worth will have been reduced to 0.01% (by volume in $1000's of USD) because no one will be interested in their stupid attempts at reading the tea (maybe pot) leaves.
AES, DES, Serpent are all symmetric, as were all of the entries to the NIST AES contest. I forget if it was a condition of the contest.
Since these are all symmetric, key distribution must either happen over another channel, or through a public key exchange method, all of which (AFAIK) use asymmetric algorithms. I don't know that I'd say that asymmetric algorithms are more susceptible, though. The biggest disadvantage to those algorithms is that they tend to require a lot more computing power, and one of the goals of the NIST AES contest was to provide an algorithm that would be implementable on really small platforms, such as embedded devices and smart cards. In fact, one of the best traits of Rijndael is that it seemed just as secure as the other entries while remaining very simple. It has been implemented on a few small 8-bit microcontrollers, and, when optimized, can take as little as 32 bytes of state (RAM).
It'll start a new kind of patent, the "email method" patent. And the the patent examiner won't be able to find any prior art, even though he tried really really hard.
Ah, but, when setting up the experiment, how do you decide who is bright and who is "not so bright"?
The real reason the MPAA are so excited about this format is that it will give them the ability to STOP circulation of some DVDs. This kind of read-once system means that the media corps can control public appetite for a movie. Disney wised up to this marketing technique years ago by intentionally shutting down the sale of several older titles to conveniently reissue them several years later. When they do so, people go out and buy them in droves, thinking "Ahh, I liked Snow White as a kid, and my kids haven't seen it yet! I'm so lucky they re-released it so I can buy it for the cost of a new release!".
If this system takes off, you can expect to lose the ability to rent a lot of older titles... at least temporarily. Then, periodically, titles that are cheap enough and popular enough will get reissued, and others that would cost too much for the benefit (i.e. movies where the amount of the sale that goes directly to the studio is lower) will never be seen again.
Also, if a new copy protection or region coding "enhancement" scheme becomes available that would be backward compatible with the majority of the DVD players out there, the studios can start issuing _all_ read-once DVDs with the new scheme. That way they can force the new technology on consumers much more quickly. And if the new scheme is cracked, they can incorporate a fix just as fast as they are able to change the master being used by manufacturing. Of course, those few who have older players that won't work with the new scheme will need to "upgrade", resulting in a new royalty to the studios.
If this sounds too nefarious to be possible, go find out more about the copy protection that these same studios are trying to incorporate into CDs, or find out about the "region coding enhancement" that is on some newer DVDs. Now imagine a world where these read-once DVDs are firmly entrenched in the market, and try to imagine the studios NOT using their advantage in the supply chain to force a newer, better protection scheme on consumers. Yeah, I thought so.
The studios have noticed that drug dealers don't sell kits to help you make your own drugs whenever you want. They sell drugs directly, and customers keep coming back. Which way do you think the dealers would make more money?
D
Perl code is already compressed. It is very near to random data. The problem is that it is compressed with an algorithm called "perl hacking" that is not reversible. That's why Perl is sometimes called a write-only language.
// readable
// less readable
// not readable... check to see if the perl compiler will accept it as valid code... if not, you may actually have random data! :)
;)
My general rule of thumb of language readability: the more often you find yourself holding the shift key and pressing a number key from the top row, the less readable the language is.
e.g.
int result = obj.foo(bar)
p* += &(*--q);
#i %*)@!%(#@)**#
"Luke, I am your father!"
"No!!!!!!!!"
I couldn't help laughing at the title. The first thing that popped into my head was, "How do you measure the amount of steganography on the internet?" Seems like the answer is that there should be a lot of nearly useless information, a low signal-to-noise ratio if you will. Which, I'm sorry to say, is a very accurate description of the internet. :P
:)
Okay, okay, now I'll go read the article.
Happy winnowing and chaffing!
Dave
The problem is that this won't hamper the police too much. They'll still scan houses with FLIR, violating the privacy of the citizens they're sworn to serve. They just can't go get a warrant with the results of the scanning, or use it in court. How many of you have confidence that when they take the scanner out to scan someone *with* a warrant, that they won't get "curious" and check some other places they are suspicious of for any reason? Then, if they can find anything that might indicate an illegal activity, how long do you think it takes for them to wait and watch until they've got enough evidence for a warrant? I think police use illegal means of gathering evidence all of the time, they just need to "clean up" the evidence by "finding" it in a legal way afterward. Which is much easier once you know what the evidence is.
The real problem is not FLIR or any future technology, it's the corruption in our police force. New technology just enables them to become more corrupt if they choose to be. And in the end, as the corruption becomes more widespread and more routine, it is the honest citizens that get the shaft, since they effectively lose their 4th amendment rights.
Ultima Online, Everquest, etc. have tried the pay-per-play model. Admittedly, I haven't tried them, because I find the pricing model extremely distasteful, but from what I've heard from friends and online, the idiot-to-real-player ratio is no better than any other "free after initial purchase" online game. Which would seem to indicate either 1) there are as many stupid people who would pay to play as there are those who would not, or 2) charging a fee to play discourages (proportionally) as many real players as it does the idiots.
Actually, the second possibility is just a restatement of the first. Anyway, as a prospective "real player", I think both items are true. So let's encourage the gaming industry to charge us in the way we would prefer to be charged. Isn't that what capitalism is supposed to do for us anyway?
Dave